Novell Announces SUSE Appliance Toolkit

Novell has introduced a suite of new tools to reduce the time and cost for ISVs and enterprises to develop, deploy and manage software appliances. With the availability of the SUSE Appliance Toolkit, Novell is providing an integrated solution for building, testing, updating and configuring software appliances across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

In July, Novell announced the SUSE Appliance Program, an overarching umbrella program that included technology, support and go-to-market elements designed to make it possible for ISVs to build and get to market quickly with software appliances. "What we are doing here is following up on the promise we made this summer to deliver the rest of the technology stack that an ISV would need to get to market," says Matt Richards, director emerging technology marketing for Novell, tells LinuxLine.

The new appliance toolkit has three components, SUSE Studio Onsite, a local, behind the firewall version of the online appliance creation tool, SUSE Studio Online that was introduced this past summer; SUSE Lifecycle Management Server, which allows users to patch, update and manage entitlements for appliances that have been built with SUSE Studio; and then the last piece is called WebYaST, for remote web-based configuration of SUSE Linux Enterprise. "With those three elements wrapped up into a package we have really the tools that an ISV needs to build, deploy, test, configure, and then patch and update an appliance, in other words everything an ISV needs to get to market," says Richards. Developers can choose to build their appliances on either SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE .

Since the July announcement of the SUSE Appliance Program, nearly 4,500 ISVs have registered for the web-based appliance-building tool SUSE Studio. Members of the SUSE Appliance Program include IBM, Adobe, Black Diamond Software, BitRock, GroundWork Open Source, Ingres, SEP, ROC Software and Zmanda.

For more information about the toolkit, go here. For more information about the SUSE Appliance Program, go here.